Chronic pain affects the lives of many people. These pains can last for months or years and reduce the sufferers quality of life and can lead to secondary symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Our ability to treat these chronic pain states is currently limited.

The London Pain Consortium was formed in June 2002 by a grant from the Wellcome Trust, under its Integrative Animal and Human Physiology Initiative (IAHP). The purpose of the consortium is to undertake internationally competitive research in pain research and to train scientists in the integrative physiology and genomics of pain.

Our research focuses on the genomics of pain at several levels, including transcriptional profiling and the establishment of a pain database, the study of transgenic mice and the evaluation of pain sensitivity in people (more details).

In 2008 the London Pain Consortium was re-funded for a further 5 years under the Wellcome Trust Strategic Awards (more details).

Our training programme includes a 4 year PhD scheme, multidisciplinary post-doctoral fellowships, Ph.D. training for clinicians and opportunities for summer students (more details).

Previous projects funded by the Consortium (IAHP)
1. Tissue-specific and inducible knock-outs. more details
2. Functional properties of identified trigeminal primary afferents and adaptive changes following acute and chronic inflammation. more details
3. Mechanisms of HIV viral envelope protien gp120-induced painful neuropathy. more details
4. Rodent model of Zoster-associated pain. more details
5. Characterisation of mouse dorsal horn organisation. more details
6. Cannabinoid signalling in the pain pathway. more details
7. The Mechanisms of secondary hyperalgesia. more details
8. The Functional Development of Supraspinal Pain Processing in the Human Neonate and Infant. more details
9. Data Mining to reveal potentially novel genes and biological processes involved in the pain response. more details
10. The role of genetics and environment in pain. more details
11. NK-1 Receptors and developing pain pathways. more details
12. Using RNA interference to study the role of potassium channels in neuropathic pain. more details